North Carolina voluntary gun surrender event produces big results

Jazz ShawPosted at 2:01 pm on November 22, 2015

A staple among the more “reasonable” gun control advocates in America is the voluntary gun turn-in or buy-back program. Hillary Clinton has recently gone on record as a big supporter of these programs, whether they be optional or… not so optional, like in Australia. If you had any doubt about the effectiveness of such plans, the folks in Greensboro, North Carolina were out to prove you wrong this month. They held just such an event where they would accept any number of weapons, getting them off the streets and presumably out of the hands of criminals. And while some offers of this type promise cash or gift certificates in exchange for the surrendered firearms, this one was based on nothing more than the good will of the people. No money was offered and participants were given the chance to sign a “pledge of non-violence” for the future.

So how did that turn out? If you read the coverage from this Time Warner Cable News Network report it was a smashing success. Almost 1,000 people turned out and it was a glorious day to get guns off the streets.

Almost 1000 people took “A Pledge of Non-Violence” Saturday at Destiny Christian Center in Greensboro.

This was to show their commitment to safety across the Gate City.

Gun owners also turned in unwanted firearms and ammunition at the event.

Signing the pledge and turning in weapons was spurred, in part, by an increase in gun violence across the city.

So that’s a big win all the way around, right? Sure… but the details of the “success” become a bit less impressive if you watch the video associated with the report. NRA-ILA checked into it and, sure enough, plenty of liberals showed up to sign the pledge but reports of the number of “weapons” surrendered might have been just a tad misleading.

Police-community partnerships are a positive measure to increase public safety, but good intentions aren’t the same thing as a good (or effective) plan. A report by Time-Warner Cable News tried to put a positive spin on things by noting that “almost 1,000 people” responded to take the pledge, leading one to believe that 1,000 firearms had been turned in, but this was hardly the case. As evidenced by the footage accompanying the story, the gun turn-in apparently resulted in a single BB pistol and a single sheathed hunting knife being “taken off the streets.”

Fear no more, citizens, for the streets are a safer place today. This was apparently the extent of their haul. The “gun” portion of the turn-in looked like this:

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. It’s a BB gun. One BB gun. But they also managed to remove this item from the criminal community.

I suppose the phrase weapons and ammunition is accurate. The BB gun did come with a couple of bags of pellets. And while “firearms” (plural) seems a bit dishonest, there were actually “weapons” since the knife counts as one. But the fact is that these voluntary turn-ins seem to produce a higher volume when the government offers a lot of cash. Yet even then you tend to get antiquated or broken hunting rifles and world war era leftovers found in people’s attics. It’s a rare day when an actual criminal with a functional, high power handgun is going to show up where a bunch of cops are standing around and surrender the piece he used to kill somebody last week for some extra lunch money.

But don’t tell that to Hillary Clinton. In her world, this is the neatest thing since sliced bread.